


a dwindling, mercurial high

by sundermount



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bottom Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Infidelity, M/M, Post-Canon, Rimming, Roleplay, Top Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:22:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundermount/pseuds/sundermount
Summary: Felix returns to his chambers and is greeted by someone he does not expect.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	a dwindling, mercurial high

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the relevant tag. I've also included a quick tl;dr of events in the end note so you can judge if this will be something that's to your tastes (or not).

“You,“ Felix snarls.

“Alexei,” Dimitri supplies. 

“ _Alexei_ ,” Felix says, voice rising in disbelief. “Right now? Fine. Okay. We’re doing this now.”

Dimitri—no, _Alexei_ , is clad in a stained shirt and worn trousers tucked into old work boots. He is not sat in the usual, easy sprawl Dimitri relaxes into around Felix, instead perched rigidly on the most uncomfortable chair in the room.

His hands fidget. His legs shuffle. Tells unique to Dimitri himself that speak of his nervousness.

Felix is almost incandescent with his own fury. How _dare_ he appear only now, when Felix had already triumphed over that small, hopeful part of him, bitterly vicious that his pessimism had won out.

A peace of mind, granted by refusing to receive correspondence during two weeks in the Fraldarius countryside, undone by one man. And Dimitri finally had the daring to approach him. _Nervous_.

“You remember me, do you not?” Dimitri’s voice takes on that unusual, softer affectation he has assigned to this persona; entirely absent of prince or boar or Felix’s Dimitri. “We met two weeks ago, when you were doing a routine survey of the farmlands.”

The accent is the same, however. For all of Dimitri’s talents, faking one was never an attainable skill for him.

Felix swallows against the tightness in his throat, against the impulse that would have had him draw his sword and chase Dimitri out. His face trembles in a half-snarl as he yanks his gloves off, slapping each hard on the table near the door.

Dimitri would not flinch—he has suffered Felix’s temper for too long to be affected. But he jumps at the first audible _thwack_ of leather against wood.

Such commitment to this farce.

Felix turns away as he unfastens his cloak and squeezes his eyes shut as he steadies his breathing. It is a while before he finally composes himself enough to face Dimitri again.

“It has been a while since I last saw you, A—Alexei. I was not expecting you.” Felix walks towards him, the _click_ of his boots clear and sharp on wood as he unbuckles his sword belt. “Do you not have somewhere else to be?”

“Is this not a good time?” Dimitri stands, posture imperfect, wringing his hands. “Given your proposal when we met at my farm, and considering that it is to be your last night in Fraldarius— I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I will take my leave now.” 

_Stay_ , Felix will never plead. “Sit,” he commands instead, placing his sword in its stand. He clenches his fist, his nails biting into his skin.

The blunt pain calms him, slows the beat of his heart and quells some of the fire that burns in him. The wrong kind of fire that would be counterproductive if the night is to go as he thinks.

Dimitri does as he is told, sharply inhaling and visibly shivering as he follows Felix’s instruction. 

“I’ll admit,” Felix says, giving careful consideration to his words as he approaches Dimitri, “that I had not thought you would be bold enough to consider my offer, nor that your duties would be able to spare you for the length of time to travel here and back before the—the start of the harvest.”

He only barely manages to spit that last part out. He would applaud himself for his own quick thinking, except there is nothing to be proud of here.

“The circumstances that have brought me to you were truly an act of serendipity and a blessing of the fates.” Dimitri looks up at Felix, hands gripping the scratchy cloth of his work pants tight, clenching in whatever scant excess of fabric his thick, muscular thighs have not already commanded for themselves.

“Then I will take the blessing for what it is, and make full use of whatever time we have,” Felix swallows. His palms tingle and he tenses, flexing it. How much time will they be afforded?

“I am honoured to be able to serve His Grace for the rest of the night as best as I can, before I ride out at the break of dawn,” Dimitri murmurs, looking down to avoid Felix’s gaze.

A few hours, then. More than Felix had wanted, less than he will ever admit to wanting.

Felix walks up to Dimitri and cups his head between his hands. He is surprised that they remain as steady as they do.

“As am I,” he whispers, voice losing some of the steel he had tried so hard to keep in it. Dimitri’s skin is warm against his palm, the rough scrape of stubble lending an edge to the sensation.

Dimitri looks up at him, hair out of its usual half-updo. It falls into his eyes and sweeps to the right, obscuring the eye there—the flesh of it looking pinker than usual, as if he has kept his eye covering on for longer than prescribed.

Felix brushes his hair to the side, slowly enough that Dimitri could stop him if he wanted. He does not. His hair is soft under Felix’s hand, and it nearly hurts him to let go.

Dimitri’s eye is indeed pinker than the last time Felix saw it, raw and tender-looking. He fails to suppress a tremble as his hand as it hovers over Dimitri’s eye, awaiting permission to touch. “What happened here? What happened to you?”

“An old injury,” he says in that soft voice. _Alexei_ ’s voice. “I do not mind if you touch it. But I hope that you do not take it as an insult, how my own carelessness has marred and desecrated a body only meant for hard work, as some have put it. That I come to you not as a whole man, but a broken one.”

Felix traces a finger down the scar over the eyelid, tremor now suppressed, the movement of it controlled to an almost dangerous degree. The raised flesh of scar is too smooth against his light touch; he takes utmost care to be careful, to not irritate the scar further by having it catch on a callous.

His rage simmers at a slow, roiling bubble at what might’ve happened to prompt that line of thinking again. At the sharp-tongued people who lurked in waiting for precisely this opportunity.

Mostly, he is angry at _himself_ , in Fraldarius with too well-timed an excuse and not in Fhirdiad to make preemptive strikes, because it was his presence that kept them away from Dimitri. The King’s personal attack dog, he knows they call him.

It would be a lie that he does not relish in the title as much as he does.

“You are beautiful despite it. Because of it, I would say,” he manages to choke out. He crouches down, the hand on Dimitri’s head drawn to his heart, pressing at where it beats strong below rough cloth and warm skin. He feels his voice slipping into a menacingly low growl, the kind he uses on traitors to the crown, assassins sent to end Dimitri’s life. “You survived a dreadful thing and worked hard to get to where you are now. Do _not_ entertain the notion that you are not whole, or make the mistake of assuming I think the same.”

“You treat me too kindly,” Dimitri says, and smiles at him as if it is the only good thing he has heard in those two wretched weeks they have been separated.

“I treat you the way you deserve, D—“

“ _Alexei_ ,” he says insistently. “Please, Duke Fraldarius. I may be untried, but it has been said that I am a good worker, and someone who takes instruction well. If you are to be my first—I know I am in good hands, but I would like it to be good for you.”

The hand not on Dimitri’s heart moves to grip at the back of his neck. It is a miracle his hand does not tremble again as he feels the fragile shell of himself splinter, peel, crack. Felix did not know that he had wanted this as well. That this farce Dimitri has sprung upon him carried a certain underlying sentiment to it.

Dimitri’s trust in him threatens to break Felix; even more than what made him flee for Fraldarius, or his sudden appearance.

“I have never done this before, which contributed to my initial hesitance,” Dimitri demurs, gaze tilted down bashfully as if he is truly an _untried farmhand_ , submitting himself to being bedded by a war hero in his homecoming.

“You made it good for me,” Felix chokes. “That—that moment when you brought me to your stables, and took me in your mouth before I left. I did not lie when I said it would be an honour to have you in my bed, D—Alexei.”

He clears his throat and continues, still unable to keep the rough scratch in his voice out. “That you are willing to give yourself to me and put yourself in my hands—it is a responsibility I do not take lightly. You can trust that I will make it as good for you as I am able.”

“I am the luckiest man in the world besides the King himself, then, if Duke Fraldarius is pledging this sort of fealty to me.” Dimitri’s hands reach up, to hover behind Felix’s head. “May I?”

Felix nods, rising from his crouch and moving to sit on the bed. He ignores the growing lump in his own throat.

Dimitri follows him, leaning over to undo the knot that holds his hair together. His movements are fumbling and slow, and not his usual practised unknotting of ribbon. Another tic unique to Alexei, probably; one does not forget how to undo a knot in the span of two weeks.

Felix sighs as his hair is let free and coaxed around his face by Dimitri’s hands, arranged this way and that, tucked over his ears and brushed over the front of his shoulders.

His attention is intense on the strand falling into Felix’s eyes that he never knows what to do with when it is not trapped in a high bun or tail. What about it enamours him so, Felix does not know.

He breathes in and suppresses his grimace. Dimitri’s hands do not smell like parchment nor bitter ink nor steel. They carry the faint scent of the earth and a tang of soap—specifically, the cheap scented bars affordable to and popular amongst the working class.

The attention to detail is impeccable. Felix closes his eyes as he breathes the unfamiliar smell in again. Even in this, he cannot have Dimitri.

Dimitri moves back when he is finally satisfied, hair ribbon pinched tight between his pointer and middle fingers. He takes a long, considering look at it.

“These are in the Kingdom’s colours,” he says of it—deep blue, cut through in the middle with threads of silver.

Felix scoffs.

“An astute observation,” he replies. “Yes.”

He looks at it, then at Felix. “You are no longer of Fraldarius now, are you?” He pauses to swallow and direct his gaze to the ground again. “Forgive my impudence. It was just a stray thought.“

Felix lets him sit with it for a moment before he speaks.

“You are right,” he says, his voice slow and even, “that that was an extremely impudent statement. You know nothing of me besides my name, my accolades, my birthplace, my family, and my desire to fuck you.”

“I’m sor—“

Felix continues, voice growing steadier. “I will always be a Fraldarius of Fraldrius, and when I pass, here is where my bones will be interred. But my heart is in Blaiddyd, and at Fhirdiad is where I will remain.”

Dimitri startles, as if the answer was not expected. The mildest twinge of annoyance hits Felix—what did Dimitri expect? Present circumstance aside, he cannot keep running back to Fraldarius at every inconvenienced feeling; he has his duties, after all.

The mask of Alexei goes back on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to presume, but the ribbon was oddly—”

“It is.” Felix nods. So much previously left unsaid, confirmed only now, when there is almost no more time left.

“What of them, then?” Dimitri fumbles with the ribbon in his hand, smoothing the pads of his fingers along the smooth silk of it as his lips thin into a line. “Do they not mind you doing whatever it is you are doing with me?”

Felix stands, taking hold of his hands and the ribbon in it. The bitter laugh that he barks, carries the faintest trace of amusement in it. He revels in the hilarity of the irony—he will be hard-pressed to find humour in anything after tonight.

“Your Grace?” A hint of something flashes in Dimitri’s eye, before it shifts into one of false confusion. Still determined to playact a simple farmhand who knew nothing but of crops and irrigation, who rode a day and a night in misguided pursuit of passion.

“You have nothing to worry about.” Felix ties the ribbon around a bedpost before he raises Dimitri’s hands to his, pressing a kiss to his scarred knuckles. “And refer to me as Felix in bed, you bo— buffon. Would you find it arousing if I referred to you as _farmhand_ in bed?”

“Felix,” Dimitri gasps, as Felix presses his mouth to his neck. His hands are tentative and unsure as they rest of Felix’s hips, thumbs pressed right in that divot of bone that makes him _melt_. “Are you really sure of this?”

Felix tries to convey as much annoyance in his voice as possible, failing as Dimitri’s hands grip tighter, and his thumb traces over the bone. “You ask me this after you spurned my initial advances, then rode all the way here.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, thumb still doing that maddening back and forth, back and forth over the spot. “I have no question about your willingness to still bed me—I just meant, would it be okay with both yourself and them if you took me?

Irritation wells up in him again, threatening to swallow the tide of his burgeoning arousal. He closes his eyes, pressing his nails hard into his palm as he bites the inside of his cheek, willing the additional pain to ground him enough. He breathes in once, then opens his eyes again.

He reaches up slowly to brush a length of hair behind Dimitri’s ear, studying the clear blue of his eye. “Alexei. Have you ever been in love with someone you cannot have?”

That look flashes in Dimitri’s eye again, lasting a split-second longer before it disappears. He nods, then, thinking better of it, shakes his head.

“I may be simple, but I am not so silly that I would consider this love.” Felix tries not to flinch. He knows that this is _Alexei_ , not Dimitri. Dimitri does not share that sentiment. Dimitri could never be this cruel.

A choreographed fight never aims to injure the way an actual one does. That does not mean it does not hurt.

One of Dimitri’s hands leaves Felix’s hip, moving up the curve of his waist. “You were indeed someone I thought I could not have. We are men of different stations. I did not entertain fanciful dreams of you paying any attention to us farmhands beyond surveying the general quality of our life.”

“If you thought I would never pay you any attention, you were grievously wrong,” Felix says. His hands lay on the sides of Dimitri’s neck, and for a moment, he is tempted to _choke_.

“It is not just that. I thought I lost you when I could not bring myself to take you up on your offer, and then you left town and I thought my chance lost forever.”

His hand trails further up to the side of Felix’s face, holding it gently in a large hand. “Not to mention after this, when you leave for Fhirdiad and I return to my farm with only a memory and the ghost of your touch to warm my coldest nights.”

Felix nudges the tip of his nose into the middle of Dimitri’s palm, nearly sighing with relief as he allows himself to turn his face into it, his juddering exhale hot air in the cup of Dimitri’s hand. “So many words when you could have just said, _yes, in a manner of speaking_.”

He looks at Dimitri out of the corner of his eye, his voice sharp. “Do you have better plans for that mouth of yours?”

“Am I being granted permission to kiss you?” The hand is now warm at the base of his neck, anticipatory.

 _For however long you wish_ , Felix cannot say. Dimitri mentioned riding out at the break of dawn. Someone needs to be the responsible one.

“All that chasing, all those miles you must have ridden, and yet you tarry,” he says instead, his voice cracking. The fullest extent of emotion he can allow himself to show. 

“Are you sure?” he asks again, and Felix snaps, yanking him down by his shirt.

“ _Yes_ ,” he hisses, irritated and impatient, so filthy with longing and heartsick he is _sick_ of it. He has spent far too long waiting and wanting. False hope and the dreadful what-ifs that would plague him after were a far worse affliction than having to live with the consequences of his actions; he knows this intimately now.

“As His Grace insists,” Dimitri whispers, bending down to kiss him.

The sigh Dimitri lets out when he tastes Felix again is indecent—his choked, anguished _longing_ inflaming Felix in his own stuttering breaths, the way he goes up on the tips of his toes just so he can be closer to Dimitri as Dimitri groans and his arms gather Felix up into him, touching as much as they can, pulling and discarding every single article of clothing on their selves so no skin is left untouched.

“Make love to me,” Dimitri breathes. “Fuck me so hard I will feel you in the morning. I want you _carved_ into me, Felix, so deeply I will remember it tomorrow, in the next week and the next month and the rest of my days while I lie in a bed by myself and cannot have you.”

“You cannot just _spring_ this upon me,” Felix moans, palming at Dimitri’s nipple as he drags his mouth down the white scar tissue that bisects his chest. His mouth follows the trail of his hand down to the line of hair that leads to Dimitri’s cock, then his sack, where Felix tries to breathe the musk of him in—that horrendous cheap soap smell lingers here as well, and Felix inhales deeper, ferociously, as if he will be able to reach the dregs of lavender and rosemary he _knows_ Dimitri has a preference for if he tries hard enough. 

He pushes Dimitri down onto the bed, then falls to his knees, the _thud_ of it echoing and causing Dimitri to go, "No, Felix—". He guides Dimitri's hand to the crown of his head, glares at him, and immediately envelops as much of his cock in his mouth as he can.

Dimitri would have screamed if not for the hand he immediately shoves into his own mouth, biting down and muffling it. The other hand clenches in Felix’s hair, still taking so much care not to pull; keeping it out of Felix’s face as he bathes Dimitri’s cock in his spit, sucking on it like it would save his own fucking life, messy and unpracticed and so desperate for a taste of _something_ of Dimitri that he sobs at the first drop of precome on his tongue.

“Felix, wait—“ Dimitri pushes at his head to urge him off. Felix ignores him, sucking harder, and Dimitri groans, yanking him off his cock with the hand in his hair and the other on his neck.

Felix is suddenly, dizzyingly aware of how aroused he is; cock wet and aching from lack of stimulation and dripping onto his front and thighs and the floor, twitching harder from the sting of pain in his scalp and the warm hand on his neck. He is unable to breathe, his gasps shallow.

Dimitri leans forward to kiss him again, and they end up on the floor—Felix kneeling over Dimitri, hands pressed to every inch of uncovered skin, ghosting over scars, nails digging into the meat of his back before they retreat and Dimitri guides his hands back, pressing them in even harder than Felix had.

“Mark me,” he gasps into Felix’s mouth, wet as he kisses, and kisses, like he will die if his mouth is not on Felix’s. Felix nods, nose bumping awkwardly against Dimitri’s as he digs in harder, scratches down his back, and Dimitri’s muffled groan is so _relieved_ Felix could cry from it.

“Bed,” Felix mumbles, as Dimitri brands kiss after kiss on his mouth, on his neck, on his mouth again; over his cheek, his eyelid, the underside of his lip, so frightfully tender Felix almost asks him to _stop_ —because for all that he has been injured, he still cannot bear to suffer Dimitri’s care.

Felix has to fight to release his mouth from Dimitri’s to even speak; the soft, plush, wet of it addicting and something he has not had enough of even as it feels like they have been kissing for hours—yet when he pulls away, he is immediately drawn back to it again.

Another. Again. The hunger does not let up, and he will not be satisfied unless he can spend the rest of his life kissing Dimitri.

There is a sudden sense of being unbalanced when Dimitri stands, lifting Felix with him before they are kissing again, standing, and then on the bed right up against the headboard. Only then does Felix manage to break away from Dimitri’s lips to kiss and suck his way down his body, teeth scraping over collarbone, a nipple, a jut of hipbone, then at the inner skin of his thigh where he _bites_ and _mauls_ and all Dimitri can do is groan and sob, sounds muffled as he bites his bottom lip raw to keep them in.

The smell of him is much heavier in between his thighs now, _finally_ , the cheap soap that disgusted Felix all but gone from how he has rubbed himself raw over Dimitri and bathed him in his spit and their sweat. He urges Dimitri’s leg over his shoulder in his desperation to smell, to taste, to have this one thing for himself. His want and possession roar in impatience—he _does not have time_.

But then he sees the centre of Dimitri and it quells that anger in him. He leans forward to look. The colour of it is dark and it still carries a hint of that soap, and Felix is helpless to do anything else but put his mouth to it and lick the soap smell away, replace it with _himself_.

Dimitri’s grunts rise in pitch, teeth now clamped in a pillow and surely ruining it as Felix kisses and licks at his hole, the tip of his tongue pushing in as far as he can before he draws back, sucking at it wetly before doing the same to that soft part of him behind his sack. Dimitri thrashes under him, hips bucking upwards into Felix’s face, both legs now thrown over Felix’s shoulders and wound so tight around him it threatens to suffocate Felix.

Felix tries his best, first with his arms wrapped around a thigh each, to hold Dimitri down best as he can so he can have his mouth on him. It does not give him the leverage he needs and only serves to aid him in prying Dimitri’s thighs apart, to make him less lightheaded than he already is. He has not remembered to breathe at all, nor does he realise his cock hurts as much as it does until now—the hot, aching throb of it pulsing—because all of his attention is on Dimitri. 

The rational thing to do would be to hold Dimitri’s hips down, now that Felix is of sound enough mind and breath to consider it as an option. But then he raises himself from between Dimitri’s legs, panting, to see Dimitri indecent and lewd with his pleasure _Felix gave him_ ; one arm thrown over the top half of his face, the other gripping the base of his purpled cock tight as it throbs and leaks. His fingers are wet from how desperately aroused he must be. 

He guides Dimitri’s hands off of him and lays them by his side as Dimitri sobs, the hand around his cock resisting. His head is thrown back and eyes are still closed from the overwhelming sensation of it, backed bowed as he arches away from the bed even as he tries _so hard_ to still his hips.

Felix takes his hands, and they fold into his own and lock tight. Dimitri’s grip grows tighter as Felix returns between his legs. He takes in the sight of Dimitri wet all over before his mind goes blank with nothing but the urge to _touchseesmelltastemark_ and his mouth is on Dimitri again.

It is more difficult this time with how Dimitri writhes, and the leverage that is afforded to Felix much worse than before. But to do anything else would mean sacrificing the points of contact between their hands, and Felix just holds on harder as he strains his neck, licking into him, fucking his tongue into his loosened hole.

“Felix, I—I’m—” Dimitri says, legs clenching tighter and tighter around Felix’s head. Felix is trapped and cannot peel himself away to tell Dimitri to let go, to come—not that he even wants to—so he redoubles his efforts, praying that Dimitri can get to where he needs by the skill of his tongue. Dimitri’s heavy breaths are audible to Felix, even with his thighs tight against Felix’s ears, making him dizzy with the pressure and lack of air. 

They press against him tighter and tighter, Dimitri’s breaths going more desperate and rapid, his hold on Felix’s hands tight enough to numb. He manages to free his right thumb as he continues fucking Dimitri with his tongue, caressing it over whatever of Dimitri’s hand he can reach. 

Dimitri comes with a strangled shout, his body freezing and his legs all but locked around Felix. His thighs tighten even further with each pulse of his orgasm, and Felix tries to fight the urge to pass out from lack of air as his cock throbs even more insistently.

His legs finally fall back to the bed, and Felix raises his head to look at him; face and tongue still numb, his hands still in Dimitri’s. He smooths his thumbs over Dimitri’s knuckles to soothe him as he catches his breath, trying to keep his own breaths steady as he regains air and ignores the urge to rub himself against _something_.

“I cannot—” Dimitri rasps. He swallows and pauses, clearing his throat to test the give of it before he laughs; a short, throaty, punched noise.

“What’s so funny?” Felix tries to ask, his voice almost failing him as Dimitri’s had. He disentangles their hands and wipes at his mouth with the back of one.

“Nothing to worry your dear head about.” Dimitri quirks the corner of his lips up in a smile, looking down the length of his body at Felix still between his thighs.

Felix glares up at him as he slowly makes his way up the bed on his hands and knees. He ignores Dimitri’s cock—red, tender, still firm as it lays on his belly—in favour of cleaning his torso of come, so much of it just _wasted_ there. He drags his tongue up Dimitri’s skin, gathering come on his tongue, tasting him again and again until Dimitri’s cock jerks once, precome beading at the tip of it.

A bit of come still lays on his tongue. Felix crawls up and feeds it back to Dimitri in a kiss as he reaches for the vial of oil wedged between the mattress and headboard; a companion in his most shameful nights, alongside his own hand and fingers and the gaping maw of his chest where contentedness never knew to reside.

Dimitri took instruction well. Like earlier—when he’d sat, nicely and obediently. Even earlier than tonight, when he’d sucked cock as instructed. But Felix had gravely underestimated how _stubborn_ he would be in bed when he was set on something, which did not necessarily fall under obedience.

“It’ll be more comfortable on your front,” he gasps, fingers slick and buried in Dimitri, the warmth and tight driving him crazy, desperate with the need to be in Dimitri as he fucks against the bed, linen wet from his own cock and the oil it is slicked with.

“Let me see you,” Dimitri begs. It is exactly what Felix _cannot_ allow.

“It’ll be easier for you,” Felix says, almost desperately. Dimitri’s reply is in the shake of his head, the way he eases Felix’s fingers out of himself and _pulls_ him up, legs spread so that Felix’s cock rests at the opening of where it wants to be. 

Felix fists the sheets to the side of Dimitri’s head, gritting his teeth and hissing at the sensation. He props himself up on a forearm and uses the hand of the other to brush Dimitri’s sweat-slick hair out of his face.

“It’ll be _easier_ ,” he repeats, heart twisting, resisting the urge to beg, hand still smoothing at his hair. “Please,” he says, almost a sob. “Trust me when I say it’ll be easier.”

Dimitri takes hold of the hand on him, grip tight on Felix’s wrist as he kisses his palm and his wrist then presses it to the side of his face. “I don’t want it to be easy. I want to see you,” he begs again, the look in his eye so wretchedly forlorn Felix can only nod, then bend down to kiss him so he does not have to look at him.

Except, of course, it is Dimitri, so in the end it is still he who gets all that Felix is determined to keep under lock and key from him.

Felix goes as slow as he can bear to—bent over Dimitri, hair falling around them like a canopy that shrouds them from the night that is already fading too fast, hiding how Felix’s tears run down his cheeks and drip down from his chin, sob disguised as a moan disguised as a different sound entirely, because nobody must know.

Then he is fully sheathed, and he can only choke on how he does not want to leave, and how he will never have this again. 

“Can we just stay like this forever?” Dimitri murmurs, hands resting on Felix’s back. “Can we not—”

“If only,” Felix says, as he kisses him again; and again, and again, and then his hips are unconsciously rocking in and out of Dimitri, whose leg is wound around Felix’s, urging him deeper, faster.

“Thank you, my love,” Dimitri murmurs into a kiss. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” Felix whispers, fucking harder and faster into Dimitri. “Stop this. Not now.”

He tightens his legs around Felix, and Felix cries out, trying to fuck his hips forward, trying to push up and off him; _anything_ that would have him moving and untrapped. Dimitri’s cock throbs hot and wet between their bodies.

“You could have thrown me out,” he says, releasing his hold _just_ enough for Felix to fuck in deep and forceful, shallow jerks of his hips. “You did not, and you kept your promise. One night.”

Felix reaches between them, fist and rhythm clumsy as he attempts to fuck and jerk Dimitri off, to get him to just _stop_. To finish this because it is too much and he _cannot take it_.

He once entertained the idea that Dimitri would be loud in his orgasms; a natural extension of his baser nature, exacerbated by his own boarish tendencies.

Dimitri muffles a shout into the meat of his arms as he clenches down on Felix, leaving him no choice but to spend in Dimitri, collapsing on him as he chases his orgasm, hips pressed as tight to Dimitri as he can to fill him, mark and paint his insides as he sinks his teeth into the meat of Dimitri’s shoulder to quiet his own scream.

They are always silent when they meet. They can never be too cautious, and in that, Dimitri’s sounds are another thing Felix will never have from him.

“You don't realise how selfish you are, do you?" Felix says later, fatigue at the past few hours and upcoming week settling in. A moment of truth before the end of everything. “You take everything you want of me. You bear my marks. But you—you wear that cheap soap I hate. You are always so careful with me. You never give me anything, not even your name.”

Dimitri freezes.

“I—I didn’t think.” He stumbles over his words, anguish and turmoil clear in his eye and his stuttering. “Felix, I never thought—“

“You never do,” Felix says, threading the fingers of one hand with Dimitri’s. “Forget about it. What’s done is done.”

“Felix, I—“

“ _Forget about it_ ,” he repeats, each word spat out forcefully. What good is receiving something that was never meant to be his, or doing anything if it will not, _cannot_ be acknowledged—all of that effort, and for what? To be tucked away and looked at in secret when nobody is watching? To look back on as an older, bitter person and say, _at least there was that_?

He tugs Dimitri into his embrace, guiding his head to settle in the dip at his shoulder and neck. “Rest. We both have a long journey ahead of us later today."

Dimitri exhales. His breath falls warm across Felix’s skin, and when he inhales it brings forth chill where it once was, there one moment and gone the next.

“You know the extent of my feelings for you,” he says. As if Felix is the one that has clawed his heart out and is holding it in bloodied hands and not the other way around.

Felix does not respond with words, but tightens his hold around Dimitri like he wants to sink into him. Wishful thinking that if the more he entangles the both of them, the more they will be unable to separate.

Felix awakes alone to the fourth-worst sunrise of his life.

To put it simply: Glenn was the first. The morning he received news of Dimitri’s execution all those years ago was the second. The first one he will have to suffer without Dimitri after Dimitri inevitably dies—if he passes before Felix does—will be the third.

There is a chance Felix will go first, and that it will not be him who is left behind again, to cope with the misery of living a life without Dimitri. He will be right to believe that the chance of it is laughably low.

His ribbon is still tied to the bedpost, a ring now threaded on it. Something unfurls in Felix’s chest; he stamps out the embers it threatens to ignite again, pathetic wisps of hope curling up in him. When will he learn that it does not mean anything?

Felix unties it, looping and securing the ribbon high on his wrist, far up enough it will be hidden under his sleeve. The ring he does not even try on a finger—he knows it will not fit, too big for even his thumb. It goes on a thin chain Felix wears around his neck, brother to it in that they both shared a gifter.

It is so tempting to leave it behind. To fling it into a lake or pond. But it is easier to carry another weight around his neck than admit he can never dispose of it. To convince himself that they cannot suffer the scandal that leaving it unattended could result in; someone finding it among his effects and inviting forth consequences of an old, abandoned sin.

The sun is high in the sky as he moves towards the basin of water and almost-damp rag that were not there before they slept. The rag itself smells exactly like lavender and rosemary; he lays it across both palms and presses his face into it, telling himself he is wiping at his face even as he struggles not to smother and choke himself with it.

Felix dons his riding clothes and pulls his hair back in the severe bun he’d favoured during his days at Garreg Mach. He secures it with a leather wrap—it is punishingly tight, but at least hair will not be whipping in his face when he rides.

“Are you setting out now?” his uncle asks, hand on the bridle of a horse as Felix bites into the hardened loaf he had instructed the kitchen to set aside for him.

Felix nods in answer, face turned to take in the fields that helped raise him. It will be the last he sees of Fraldarius for a while.

“I have to,” he says. “If I am to make it back in time for the King’s wedding.”

**Author's Note:**

> Felix and Dimitri are engaging in a fairly clandestine, ill-advised affair, and there is a throwaway line at the end that makes mention of Dimitri's wedding. Who the other party is nor the details of their relationship with Dimitri is never gone into detail nor made explicit mention of anywhere else.
> 
> this was supposed to be a fic about dimitri's farmhand mitya pastoral fantasy. "supposed" is the keyword here.


End file.
